Simple Simon (pie in a jar)

The idea of ‘how clean is your house’ has been making the rounds on the sites, and Deanne commented that her house is her playpen – clean but not neat. Beth’s is her castle – tidy, but not overly clean. My house is my lab – always in a state of disarray. It’s not that I don’t clean, it’s that a clean room invites some sort of project to take place.

Case in point. Beth, Tara and Tim stopped by for a bit this afternoon and the house was in semi-disaster mode. After they left, I spent some dedicated time doing house work. All the snowmen stuff came down, I dusted a bit, put away stuff in the living room and dining room, and tackled the kitchen counters. You may have remembered from the colander post that I had some apples sitting on the counter. I stupidly bought a bag that had bruises on every single apple. They sat on the counter for over a week because I couldn’t bear just throwing them away. So….. after the kitchen was clean and shiny…..

(Don’t fret – I cut off the yucky parts.)

So, lids on and in the freezer. WAY more work than I thought it would be, and the kitchen is a disaster again. But, I made six tiny little pies and stashed them in the freezer. Today after church, I baked up:

I love you, tiny pie in a jar! I’m a crust lover, so this has the perfect crust-to-filling ratio for me. With a bit more tinkering and some other fruit fillings, we may be able to eat a different kind of pie each day! It will be good to cook something else in that oven when I’m baking bread.

UPDATE: For Deanne (I wish I had a giant quarter, because that would be so funny!):

On the off chance that anyone is reading this anymore, let me answer a few questions that came up in the comments.

I can’t remember the recipe for this dough – it had shortening, water, flour, salt and I subbed out some vinegar and vodka for the water. It was drier than a butter dough. (I’ve made that since and didn’t like it as well.)

I tried several ways of rolling out dough and trying to piece it in, but it actually worked best to just put chunks of dough in the jar and smash it around inside.

A drier filling won’t boil over as much as a juicy one.

Once it’s assembled, just screw the lid on the jar and put it in the freezer. I think it should keep well for at least a month. (I’m totally making that up, but hey – they sell frozen pies at the grocery store and they aren’t flying off the shelves.)

I bake these at about 375 – 400. Take the jar out of the freezer when you turn the oven on to preheat it. Take off the lid and put the frozen jar on a plate or baking vessel so you’ll have less thermal shock when it goes in the oven. (Read: Your jar shouldn’t crack. I’ve never had one crack.) Put a ring of foil around the edge of the pie for the first 45 minutes, take it off for 15.

Let it cool and either eat it out of the jar or run a knife around the edge to get it out. I said it’s a good crust-to-filling ratio, but it’s really a lot of crust. Cute, though!

A 2-crust recipe should work for about 6 jars.

Let me finish by saying that it’s really funny that so many people read this post. I am constantly bemoaning how I can’t make a good pie crust. If I had a show on Food Network it would be called, “Can’t Make Crust” and I’d visit sweet little grandmas around the country and make them teach me their skilz.

These are wide-mouthed 8-ounce jars (think small-cereal-bowl-sized), not tall skinny jars. I apparently caused a bit of confusion. Sorry, everyone!

I feel your pain about the bruised apples. One of my superhero powers is the ability to always pick bad apples. I can generally avoid bruises, but the apples I pick are ALWAYS mealy. I think that if a genie offered me three wishes, one of them would be to reverse that power.

Oooh, the granny’s make great pies. I guess if we all bought apples in season… that’s what we get for buying apples from Chile. (I just ate a mealy apple today, and I think I still have about 5 left, which I may make into a crisp. I’m pie crust challenged.)

try to buy local apples if you can…i heard somewhere that big apple ‘companies’ vs. orchards have found a way to store apples from the previous years’ harvest…don’t know if that is true but i bet those apples might be the mealy ones…by the way those pies are irresistably adorable…i would eat that for breakfast or at any time for that matter!!

Janet told me about your great idea and I concur…and I want pie too! I am culinarily challenged -- how long do ya bake them and do they leak all over the over and make the smoke alarm go off? My poor dogs don’t like that and it happens 2 times out of 3 that I use the oven…

Ha! I’m glad you like them. I put a frozen pie (lid off, of course) on a heat-proof pan, wrap the edge in aluminum foil, bake at 375 for 45 minutes, then another 15 or so with the foil off seemed to work. I only had one boil over, but it didn’t smoke too badly. 🙂

I’ve only frozen two batches, and ate them up within a week or so. I would guess it’s pretty airtight in there with the lid on so they should be alright for…. I don’t know. To the laboratory!

To answer the freezer-to-oven question, I took the pies out of the freezer, put them on the ovenproof plate, then stuck that on top of the oven while it preheated. I figured that was enough thawing to keep it from exploding. (It would be BAD to put a frozen jar directly on a hot oven rack. Bad.)

You can get the short quarter pint Mason jars at any hardware store in the canning section, and in many large grocery stores as well. If you aren’t going to can, the plastic twist-on freezer lids are less work than the two-piece metal canning lids.

I vote that you make them a little shorter, so that you end up with two inches or so of room on top. Then, after they are frozen, put a 12″ square of plastic wrap over top, pack to the top with vanilla ice cream, fold the plastic over, and screw the lid on. When you take it back out for reheating, the puck of ice cream will pop right out. Unwrap it and drop it back onto the hot pie for yummy pie a la mode.

Ah, thank you, Rolando. I don’t have cable (or any TV reception, actually), so only watch series on DVD. We’ve been working through the new Dr. Who -- I think Torchwood’ll be in the Netflix queue soon.

oo i’m totally making these. i’m a college student and have discovered rather unfortunately that my eating habits have gone down hill. i love pie but was afraid that if i made one i’d eat it in one day :S these are a perfect, and controllable size for me 😀

This is adorable. I would experiment like crazy with this idea, I did the cake in a jar thing years ago as teacher gifts. Did the cookies in a jar, too. They loved them, but this is great. For that dessert craving, portion control, everything, love it!

Hi, I just posted this at Not Martha, and it occurred to me that should post it here, too. I have some confusion about the measurements in this idea. I checked out the sizes above, and Not Martha (who rued not using 8-oz jars) definitely used the same size you used, 4-oz, although here in the comments, you seem to have made a mistake, calling them “wide mouth half-pint.” 8-oz, half-pint jars are, if we use your measurements, about 4 quarters high, not two. We just made these, using 8-oz (half-pint) jars. This had some unintended consequences.

First, they’re just not nearly as cute.

Second, you can’t put the dough in and push it against the sides, because the jars are too deep and, using standard wide mouth, too narrow for an average person’s hands.

So you have to roll dough, make 2 dough circles, put one at the bottom of the jar, roll out a long-ish rectangle, make it into a cylinder, insert the cylinder in the jar, fill it with filling, put the other dough circle on top and tidy up the top of the cylinder. A lot of fussing, especially with pie crust, which notoriously does not appreciate fussing.

Next time we’re going to try the little 4-oz, because I think the wishful thinking (on Not Martha) about 8-oz didn’t take into account the fact that the size difference is in height, not height and width.

I’ll have to fix this when I get home (I’m at work waiting for things to print -- I’m not goofing around. Really!) Anyway, the 8 oz. jars I used were pretty short & squat. You can see a picture of them side-by-side with the 4 oz jar here. http://lloydandlauren.com/?p=1792 Sorry for the misunderstanding. I never thought about tall jars. You’re right -- those are no good for pie.

This are very cute. My husband is in Iraq right now and I am sure he would love some pie. What do you think about baking them in the jars and them sealing them with the lids while they are hot. Think it would last a week for the hike overseas?

I was wondering the exact same thing, for the exact same reason, Sarah. (aren’t deployments fun?…not!) I have heard that the cake version travels over there really well. The crust sogginess factor could be a problem, though…

I’d say perhaps freeze them again and send them in a cooler with dry ice? I looked up some stuff on an FDA website, but I misplaced it. Good luck! 🙂 Tell your husband thanks so much for his service to our country!!

So I went ahead and baked the pies in the jar and then put the lids on while they were still hot. The lids sealed really well. After they had cooled completely I put them in the freezer overnight. In the morning I wrapped them with bubble wrap and put them in one of those flatrate boxes from the post office with fragile written all over it. Sent them on Wednesday last week and my hubby got them Monday night. He said they turned out awesome. Nothing broke and the crust was not soggy. I did a homemade cherry/blueberry mix filling for the pies(his favorite). Now Hubby in Iraq gets to have my homemade pie on thanksgiving. Thanks for the idea Lauren. Give it a try Amber. I am sure your hubby would love it. I sent extra so he could share with his buddies. I am going to do this with cake for his birthday in January.

You know its people like you that makes this old world go round i think this is great and about the sweetest thing ive seen in a while i dont know you at all but this little pie says it all thanks and never stop.

I love this -- this idea is one of the most wonderful things I have seen -- I was looking for ideas on how to send something to my son deployed in “the SandBox” -- found your information an Navy for Moms -- this takes the cake! No I am going to make Cake in the Jar and send it for his birthday! along with some apple pie! So cool thank you!

Fascinating, thank you! I spent my childhood in Yorkshire in the UK, and I’ve been trying to find a recipe for this delicious pie I remember eating all the time, but can’t remember what we called it!!! Do you know a famous pie recipe from Yorkshire?

I haven’t seen this particular style of jar in a while, but if you google ‘pie in a jar’ and search the images, you can see a variety of styles. I would worry about using something that wasn’t meant for home canning, though, since you’ll be putting it in a hot oven (on a cookie sheet or something to help with heat distribution.)

I just made these…mine exploded though..=[ I think it was too much filling? Maybe I’ll try again? They were fun to make though, you were right about stuffing the dough at the bottom…there really is no other way. Thanks for this post they will make awesome secret santa gifts…er…once I work out the kinks!

I wouldn’t put a jar straight from the freezer into a hot oven -- that is asking for disaster. Let the frozen pie sit out while the oven preheats (about ten minutes for me), then set it on another pan (cookie sheet or cake pan) when you put it in the oven. The cold (not freezing) jar will warm up without as much thermal shock.

Just wanted to say, I just found this! 🙂 I have 6 kids moving in with me in one week and I’m scrambling for a way to have a variety of foods available for school lunches and snacks… well, for all meals! Love these!

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